


we don't smoke marijuana in muskogee.

by orphan_account



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: College, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Recreational Drug Use, Weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:57:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21542365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “It’ll help you relax, man. That’s why I got it for you. It’s gonna be okay. Trust me.”And Rhett knows he’s sealed the deal.Fuck, Link thinks. I’ve got to say no.“Fine,” is what comes out his mouth instead, breathy from the sigh it’s riding on, and Rhett smiles.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	we don't smoke marijuana in muskogee.

Link never did drugs in high school. 

There was a stint where Rhett might’ve gotten a little too into the crowd that liked to associate themselves with the  _ Wax Paper Dogz _ , but Link never dared. He’d say it was because he was tired and just wanted to go home, or because his throat hurt from singing after a long gig onstage and he didn’t want to smoke any weed and make it worse, but really it was because he was a terrible liar and knew he couldn’t keep it a secret from his Momma. She’d know. And she’d be disappointed.

So Link stayed clean as a whistle all through high school, maybe the only thing he ever allowed himself to indulge in being a couple of stolen sips from an adult’s beer can during a New Year’s party, Rhett giggling quietly in the shadows and egging him on. And for the most part, there wasn’t a huge drug culture in Harnett County. The teenagers there stayed pretty clean, the steeple of the nearest church never far out of sight and therefore never far out of mind, the Southern Baptist ideals acting as a stranglehold on the natural teenage ambition to rebel. 

College, however, is far from Buie’s Creek, far from Harnett County, and even farther from All-Knowing-Mommas. 

And Rhett is in his prime. 

“Made a friend in Chem today,” he tells Link as he enters the dorm room at about 5:30 in the afternoon, November, of their freshman year at NC State. The sun is steadily going down by now, and it’s cold as balls outside, the weather having dropped substantially about a week prior. Link is cuddled up on his dorm bed, cocooned in about three separate blankets, with too many books to count splayed open on the bed in front of him; It’s exam season, after all.

“Made a friend  _ today _ ?” Link questions, looking up from _ Human Origins: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology _ . “The semester’s almost over, Rhett.” 

Rhett hesitates for a bit before speaking.

“Okay, I lied. Not really a friend.”

“Then what?”

Rhett pauses, looking like he’s going to take his backpack off, which  _ yeah, why hasn’t he done that yet. Gotta be heavy. _

“Don’t freak out.” Rhett says, eyes wide like he knows he’s doing something bad. 

“What the fresh  _ fuck _ are you talking about, dude?” Link says, extra emphasis on the  _ fuck  _ so Rhett can really know how mad Link is that his study session was interrupted for a conversation that seems to be going nowhere fast. Or slow. Or really even anywhere at all. 

And then Rhett drops the bomb. Or, more accurately, he drops his backpack, and from the backpack he produces the bomb. 

There, resting in the palm of his hand is a zip-loc baggie with some fucking  _ weed _ in it, and Rhett has snuck it into their dorm. 

“Like I said. Not a friend. Just a drug dealer.” And he has the audacity to look pleased as punch with a shit-eating grin on his face when he knows full well that getting caught with that zip-loc bag can get them both kicked out of school for good  _ and  _ a strike on their permanent criminal record.

Link is hopping off his bed before he really even makes a conscious decision to do so, stomping his way over to Rhett fussily.

“You fucking idiot,” he whispers harshly through his teeth, and makes a mad swipe for the bag in Rhett’s hand, but he’s just not quite tall enough to reach it as Rhett swings his arm upward in a wide semi-circle and holds the weed up as high as he can reach, which is just about a foot too tall for Link to grab. He gives up on the physical method of seizing the pot and instead tries his hand at verbal coercion to get Rhett to throw it the fuck out. 

“Do you have any idea what would happen to  _ both of us _ if they found you smoking that shit inside of a school dorm room?” he hisses at Rhett fiercely. “You are stupid as shit for bringing that in here. Get rid of it. Now.”

“Fuck no,” Rhett says back, still holding his arm high above Link’s reach. “I paid 20 bucks for these two grams. You’re welcome.”

“ _ I’m welco- _ What the fuck are you talking about?! Get it out of here!”

“I’m not gonna! I bought it for a reason!”

“I swear to God, Rhett, you are trying to give me an aneurysm,” Link says, turning away from Rhett and gripping his own bleach-blonde hair with a tight fist. 

“Dude. That’s why I got some weed. You’ve been so high strung with all these exams coming up. I got it so you could chill out for at least a little while. One night.”

“You’re crazy!” Link says, anger resurging again as he spins 180 degrees on his heels to face Rhett once more. “I am not smoking that shit, I’ve never even smoked  _ anything _ !”

“Wait, pause-” Rhett says, finally bringing his arm down from the ceiling to hold both hands in front of him in a placating gesture.

“You’ve never smoked weed before?”

Link hesitates before he realizes that he’s _ already said it _ and dug himself into a hole.

“No, I always made up some lie about why I couldn’t do it with you guys. I just never wanted my mom to smell it on me. And then kill me.”

“Dude,” Rhett says, laughing. “She’s not here anymore. You can go wild with it. If we play our cards right, nobody will even know what the hell is going on. Keep it discreet.”

Rhett can tell he’s saying the right things because he can see the tension loosening in Link’s forehead, his eyebrows no longer knitted so tightly together. 

“It’ll help you relax, man. That’s why I got it for you. It’s gonna be okay.  _ Trust me _ .”

And Rhett knows he’s sealed the deal. 

_ Fuck _ , Link thinks.  _ I’ve  _ got _ to say no. _

“Fine,” is what comes out his mouth instead, breathy from the sigh it’s riding on, and Rhett smiles. 

“Chill out. Take a break from all that studying, man. You’ve got those exams in the bag, okay?”

He places both hands on Link’s shoulders, presumably for added reassurance, but one hand is still grasping the baggie of weed, and when it finally comes within a few feet of Link, he can really smell it. That shit is strong.

“Holy fuck, Rhett,” he grimaces, turning his head to the opposite side. 

“Sorry, yeah. Good stuff,” Rhett says, and then he smiles again. Link thinks he looks entirely too happy for this. “Go wet some towels in the sink.”

Link blinks at the non-sequitur, wondering if he heard him correctly.

“You heard me correctly,” Rhett says, reading his mind. “Trust me. When you’re done bring them back out from the bathroom.”

Link obliges, grabs two towels and drenches them under the sink before squeezing out excess water, and when he returns to the bedroom Rhett is sitting under the open window between their beds, arms resting on the sill and fingers dexterously rolling the weed up into rolling papers.

Rhett barely spares him a glance before he says, “Line the towels up under the gap at the bottom of the door.” Link does. 

Rhett pats the spot across from him and Link moves to sit facing Rhett, their back against their respective beds and their left shoulders pressed against the low windowsill. 

Link feels his nerves skyrocket when Rhett finishes the first joint.

“Hm, we can start with this,” Rhett says, picking a comically small hot pink Bic lighter from the front pocket of his jeans. Link snorts at the sight of the color. 

“Cute.”

“Hey man,” Rhett says, positioning the joint in his mouth with one hand and maneuvering the absolutely  _ stupid  _ looking Bic lighter around in the other. “The lady at the gas station didn’t give me a choice, she just handed it to me when I said I wanted one.”

Link laughs. “Works the same, I guess.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. It’s cheap.” Rhett strikes the lighter a few time before a small flame erupts and Rhett swipes it over the twisted end of the joint, puffing it lightly before exhaling the smoke out of the window. “Aw, yeah.”

He holds the joint out to Link and says, “Take it, brother,” in a commandeering tone, but his eyes are soft. Link knows that if he really didn’t want to smoke it, Rhett wouldn’t make him.   
Except he totally wants to try it, he just never wanted to get caught. But Rhett looks like he knows what he’s doing in terms of stealthiness, so Link takes the joint. 

“Little hit, don’t go big. It burns differently than a cigarette.”

Link places the end between his lips and breathes in a small breath, holding it in for a few seconds before leaning his head out of the window and letting the smoke fizzle out into the rapidly darkening sky. 

“Don’t feel anything.”

“Of course not,” Rhett says. “Hit it again.”

So he does, and he goes a little bit bigger this time, eyebrows scrunching up as he drags a big breath in, and he holds his breath a little bit as he passes the joint back to Rhett. 

He breathes out when Rhett breathes in, and he’s starting to get jittery. 

“Relax, man,” Rhett says on the exhale, his voice thick with the smoke. “You’re okay.”

Link takes a big breath of just oxygen, shaking the jitters out of his limbs as he does so. 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, bo. Everything’s fine.”

Link nods and accepts the joint back from Rhett, having to relight it with the dumb pink lighter. It’s actually so small and inefficient that it almost hurts to hold. 

And it’s pretty damn funny. 

“Such a dumb lighter, dude,” Link giggles as he breathes in again, and he really goes in this time. 

Before he knows it, he’s doubled up on the floor and coughing his fucking lungs out. Rhett’s got one hand holding the blunt and the other smacking Link’s back, and he’s saying something that Link can’t hear over the sound of his own hacking. Once the spell is over, he sits up wearily and suddenly feels that his head is way too heavy. 

“Coughing makes you higher,” Rhett explains.

“Stop it.”

“Huh?”

“Reading my mind,” Link says, reaching out for the weed but staring straight at the stars that are beginning to peek through the sky above them.

“Lightweight,” Rhett giggles, passing the joint to Link anyways. “Go easier this time. You don’t wanna keep coughing because then you’ll just get a really shitty headache.”

“Hmm,” Link hums and nods like he knows what Rhett’s talking about from experience.

They sit in silence for a few minutes until they run the first joint down to their fingers. Rhett begins to roll another one. 

Suddenly, Link is hit with a sudden wave of compulsion to  _ sing,  _ because holy shit the thought of music sounds so incomprehensibly good right now. He leaves Rhett to roll up at the window while he crawls across the floor to fiddle with his CD player. 

“Music,” he says unnecessarily once he’s put a disc in and curls back up in his spot next to Rhett. 

The sounds of Merle fill the room not long after. 

_ We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee... _

Rhett laughs. “Yeah we do, brother!”

Link giggles alongside Rhett’s booming laughter. The music sounds so inexplicably amazing, like it’s better now… somehow. He didn’t even think Merle could get any better. Apparently he was wrong. 

Even the room looks different, like the colors are bigger and brighter and less defined, blending into one another and becoming like a painting and for some reason it makes  _ perfect sense _ . All of the stress from the past month that has been steadily building up is now sliding off his shoulders like someone came up and just started melting it away, and now its dripping clean off of him and onto the floor where it isn’t pushing him down anymore. He feels it now, the way his head is so heavy but floaty at the same time, and his fingers and toes are tingling as he sits and lets his brain try to process everything that’s trying to get through to him right now. 

He’s dimly aware of Rhett passing him the new joint, already lit and ready, and he takes it. He’s got it pressed up against his lips when suddenly he hears it; a siren, absolutely piercing, is cutting through the sounds of Merle singing and the sounds of Rhett talking, it’s cutting his muscles up, he can’t move, he can hardly see, but he can hear the siren clear as day and he knows, deep in his bones, that they’ve been found out. 

Rhett snags the joint from Link’s trembling hands and places it down on the windowsill before whisking Link’s hands up right after and squeezing them tight. 

“Link,” he says. That’s what Link knows he says because he sees his mouth moving, but he can only hear the sound of the siren from outside the window and the sound of his own breathing, and his lungs are cold.

“Link,” Rhett says again, abandoning Link’s hands this time to instead grab his head and cup his cheeks in his palms. “That’s not for us. That’s not for us, they’re heading past Syme, man. Going down Pullen towards the Quad.” But the part of Link’s brain that was making everything make sense earlier has suddenly stopped working, and Rhett’s words aren’t making a lick of sense to him anymore. It’s scary as hell.

Rhett leans over to stop the music. The sirens have passed Syme, just like Rhett said they would, but Link has gotten even worse. 

His eyes are blown wide and are bloodshot and watery, tears starting to leak out, his breath hitching rapidly. “I don’t know what that means,” he says, and it’s fucking freaking Rhett out, because he’s speaking to Link in  _ English _ . How does he not know what it means?

“I don’t know what you’re saying, what did you say,” Link says again, voice strained. He pulls Rhett’s hands off of his cheeks and grabs them as he suddenly jolts upward like he’s caught himself on the verge of falling asleep before snapping upright to stay awake. He does this over and over again and squeezes Rhett’s hands the entire time, his eyes staying pried open, never blinking. 

“They found us, Rhett, they’re gonna come up,” he says, and then lets out a sob, his body curling into itself and expelling what Rhett assumes is the stress and anxiety Link has been feeling for months at this point. It’s happening so fast, and Rhett feels like a fucking moron. He gave him weed for the first time while he was high strung, and now he’s paranoid. Rhett feels terrible. Everybody’s been in Link’s shoes before when they first start smoking, freaking out about the cops. 

“They’re gonna take me out, Rhett, and you, too,” Link cries, hands still squeezing Rhett’s like if he lets go the world will crumble and shatter. 

“No, Link. You’re just freaking out, bo, you had too much, okay? You don’t know what’s going on, but you’re okay. Do you trust me?” 

“You made me, you made me do it,” Link cries, lifting his head up from the floor and looking at Rhett again, and Rhett sees once more just how utterly  _ gone  _ Link actually is. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen eyes that red before.

“No, I didn’t make you, you know that,” Rhett says, gripping Link’s hands with equal fervor. Link averts his gaze again, hiccuping in between sobs, shoulders heaving. Rhett doesn’t think he’s seen Link cry this hard in years. Maybe ever. And it makes his chest feel so weirdly tight.

“Listen to me, brother,” he tries again, shaking Link’s hands a little bit to get his attention. “You gotta breathe deep, okay? Breathe like me, if you want to. Just slow it down, bo, or you’re gonna make yourself sick. Or pass out.”

“I don’t wanna pass out,” Link wails, flinging his head back down to the carpeted floor beneath him, heaving in great, huge gasps of air. Rhett feels like a fucking dumbass for the stupid shit he’s saying but he’s high as a kite, too, and it’s hard to think like a sober person when your brain is so very obviously under the influence. He finds that he wants to let out a hysterical laugh, kinda like the one he let out when Link ran his truck into a ditch and Rhett smacked his head against the windshield so hard it cracked immediately, spider-webbing out from where his forehead made contact. He could almost laugh like that, except he knows that that situation was definitely not funny, and this situation isn’t funny either, so he doesn’t laugh. He would rather cry.

“I’m tingling,” Link says, his head lolling around on the floor, and Rhett realizes that Link’s forgotten all about the sound of the siren and now he’s just delirious, sobbing and hyperventilating on the floor in front of him, about to pass out. 

“I feel like stars,” Link says through gasps, and as he tries to sit up to look at Rhett, he makes it about halfway before he tilts to the side, his wide eyes flutter closed, and he slams into the floor below him before Rhett’s delayed reflexes can scream out to let go of his hands and catch him. 

“Fuck!” Rhett yells, before smacking Link’s face softly and feeling his pulse to make sure his heart is still beating, and Rhett thinks belatedly that he could have just had a heart attack, he could be dead from some dumbass weed, and Rhett’s gonna have to be the one to call the police and say that he just killed his best friend, and then they’re gonna make him call Sue and tell her that he killed her son, and then he’s gonna be incarcerated during the funeral and the last sight he ever sees of Link is him here on the floor of Syme, passed out between the two beds with tears all down his face and one of his hands still holding one of Rhett’s. 

“Fuck,” Rhett says again, his voice breaking. He crouches down low so his face is even with Link’s and he gently calls his name, begging for him to wake back up. 

“Come on, buddy. Wake up, wake up.”

It doesn’t take long before Link’s eyes flutter back open, and Rhett could almost cry with relief because he’s not thinking straight and it was entirely too easy for his massively stoned brain to fully believe that Link had just up and died from a bad freakout. But he knows that if he saw Link pass out while they were both sober he’d likely not react much differently.

“There you are, you’re okay,” he says as he gently guides Link up from the floor, and he looks so dazed and confused that Rhett feels even worse about what he’s done. 

“I’m sorry, buddy,” he whispers to Link onces he’s finally upright. 

“No, it’s okay,” Link says softly, patting his own knees for some reason, rhythmically over and over again. Rhett watches him do so.

“Embarrassing,” Link says after a while.

“No, not embarrassing. Plus I was the only one who saw.”

“Still.”

They sit in silence for a minute before Link says, “I feel much better now.”

“Good,” Rhett says, looking at him intensely and trying extra hard to catch his eyes. “I was really worried about you.”

Link laughs a bit awkwardly. Rhett thinks it sounds like music to his ears after what just happened. “Yeah, it was freaky. I couldn’t tell what was happening. Like the weed put a big blocker in my brain.” He makes a  _ schwoop _ noise and brings his hand down in a sweeping motion in front of him before he stops it with a  _ clink _ sound. “Like a big ol’ wall.”

“You had too much,” Rhett says, “and the siren made you lose it.”

“Thought it was supposed to make me calm down?”

“Sometimes it can exacerbate, like, anxiety and stuff.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel pretty great right now.”

“It does,” Rhett says, and he means it. 

“Don’t think I want any more tonight, though,” Link says gesturing at the second joint on the windowsill. “I still feel really high.”

“Oh yeah, no. No more,” Rhett agrees, taking the joint from the window and putting it in the plastic bag before stashing somewhere under his bed. 

Link is looking around the room again like it looks all the more beautiful to him now. Eventually his sight lands on Rhett and sticks there.

“I love you, Rhett.”

“Huh?” Rhett says in response, maybe ruining the moment, but the confession came out of nowhere.

“Not in a romantic way. I just love you so much, though,” Link explains, staring hard at Rhett so he knows he means it.

“It’s so hard to say it while sober. I don’t know why. But right now I feel like I can tell you over and over again. I love you because you’re my best friend, man. And because you help me when I need it and you’re the only one who can make me calm down. And you stick up for me and you care for me and protect me when I need it. And I try to do the same but you have always been amazing to me, for as long as I’ve known you.”

Rhett knows that weed lowers your inhibitions, but someone told him once that a drunk man’s words are a sober man’s secrets, and if that logic applies to high people as well, then Link is really spilling his guts. Rhett feels his heart ache in his chest in the absolute best way possible. 

“I love you too, Link.”

“Come here,” Link says, but moves to Rhett before Rhett can move over to him, throwing his arms around his neck and clinging to him. 

“Thank you for always being there for me. And with me. Even when we hated each other, thank you for staying.”

“I don’t think I could ever leave,” Rhett says, feeling his heart start to choke him, even though that doesn’t make much sense.

“I don’t think I could stand it if you did.”

“I won’t.”

“Good,” Link says. “Keep it that way.”

“I will. Promise,” Rhett says, hugging him tighter for a second before finally pulling back and letting Link go. 

They let the warm feeling of the shared moment wash over them before Link yawns and says, “I’m really tired.”

Rhett checks his watch.

“It’s not even 7 yet, buddy.”

“I know. I just wanna lay down and talk about stuff. Don’t think my body could fall asleep yet, but it definitely doesn’t wanna sit up anymore.”

The cold air from the open window has started to give the room an uncomfortable chill, so Rhett stands up and shuts it, pulling Link up afterwards. Once they’re both standing, Rhett envelops him in another hug. 

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” Link says, hugging him back. “I’m cold. Lay with me. I have more blankets than you.”

Rhett hesitates as Link pulls away, but Link can hear his thoughts, apparently.

“Not weird. Just friends. Come lay down.”

Rhett knows it’s not so much the act laying down with Link that is the problem, but rather what other people might say. But nobody else is in the room. He shrugs.  _ Fuck it. _

He climbs up onto Link’s bed after him and curls up into a big ball under the layers upon layers of blankets Link has in his possession. Link lays down onto his pillow before tilting his head forward so their foreheads touch. 

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“This makes it so much easier. Why don’t we say it more often?” Link complains. “Girls say it to their friends all the time.”

“Guys are just weirder about stuff like that. I don’t know why,” Rhett says. “We’re cowards.”

“So stupid,” Link agrees. “I wanna tell you how much I care about you all the time without people thinking about it the wrong way, you know? You deserve to hear that.”

“Thanks, man,” Rhett says. “You too.” 

“Thank you,” Link says, so sincerely that it makes Rhett giggle a little bit.

“Sorry your first experience with getting high didn’t exactly go the way we planned,” he says afterwards, bringing his hand up to pat Link’s ridiculous platinum hair comfortingly.

Link shrugs. “I’m okay now, don’t worry about it. I feel pretty great, actually. I think I’m gonna do it more often. Maybe just not while I’m super stressed out.”

“Yeah, my bad,” Rhett apologizes. “ It affects everyone differently.”

“Don’t worry, man. It’s cool.” He shifts closer to Rhett so that he’s practically pressed right up against him. Rhett wraps an arm around him.

“Ugh, I underestimated the power of a soft bed and a warm friend,” Link whines. “I’m totally gonna fall asleep.”

Rhett laughs gently, pressing him closer. “Indica. In da couch. Or, more accurately, in da bed.”

“In mah best friend’s arms. In da blanket cocoon.”

Rhett giggles. “Go to sleep, man.”

“Stay here?” Link asks, looking up at Rhett, eyes glassy.

“Yeah, buddy. I’ll stay.”

“Good. Love you, Rhett.”

“Love you too, Link.”

“Let’s get high again tomorrow.”

“We’ll see. Gotta make sure you won’t pass out again.”

“That was totally a one-time thing, I’m, like, so over it now.”

“Hm, whatever you say,” Rhett says, feeling his eyes get heavier, feeling like it all turned out okay in the end, and feeling Link smile against him as they both fall asleep. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> helloooooo hope you liked this fic!  
fun fact: a lot of the things in this work are inspired by real life things that happened to me. i had a friend have a panic attack caused by weed and it was soooo fucking scary, tried to capture some of the elements in this story. also, the pink Bic lighter is true to life as well. it's mine. and just like rhett, the lady just gave it to me without question lol. I was like...... ok thanks. also, weed makes you SOOOO open with yourself and others. Rhett and link can be so emotionally constipated with each other sometimes so I was like dammit these boys need to smoke some weed and be honest with each other... hope I captured it decently!!!!!! leaves some kudos or a comment if you enjoyed, they make my day!!!!  
also,,,, this is the longest thing I have ever written in my life, and its a Rhett and link fanfic lmaooooo. not mad about it! love them but I hope to god they never find this. stay off ao3 boys.


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